Assignment One

Critique the way in which social psychology has studied and theorised bystander intervention. By M Bluck 08596042

Bystander Intervention has been an issue studied and theorised by social psychology since the Kitty Genovese Incident in 1964, which can be understood as a signal crime (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 556). Bystander intervention concerns the investigation of when and how people react to a situation where another person or people are in need of assistance (Tuffin, 2005, p. 18). At the time of the Kitty Genovese incident, the dominant approach in psychology was Behaviourism (Tuffin, 2005, p. 134) and over the 1980s the dominant approach has become Cognitivism (Tuffin, 2005, p. 134). Alternative approaches with a less positivist emphasis also exist and Cherry (1995) has used a critical approach to investigate the culturally embedded nature of the way bystander intervention has been studied and theorised (Cherry, 1995, p. 18).

Bystander intervention was initially investigated by Bibb Latane & John Darley 1964 through a series of experiments investigating the immediate situation variables in which people would help a person in an emergency situation. Their research was performed in the context of the murder of Kitty Genoese by Winston Moseley as developed into a story covered by two Journalists, Martin Gansberg & A.M. Rosenthal (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 556). Gansberg published his article on March 27th with the headline 37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police. Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 556). This article established the main elements of the predominant Kitty Genoese murder story, 38 individuals watching her murder, that involved 3 separate attacks by Winston Moseley, for more than half an hour, no one calling the police until after she was dead (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 556). Although this account simplifies the incident, its journalistic coverage has given it the status of a signal crime, seen by many as saying something about the wider culture (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 556).

This situation was conceptualised by Latane & Darley 1964 as a group of witnesses passively not reacting to an emergency situation. The witness passivity was unexpected at the time, crowds were seen to be deindividuating facilitating active threat behaviour excitation through collective action as compared to inaction, a passive threat (Manning, Levine & Collins, 2007, p. 560).

Latane & Darley 1964 suggested the cause of the inaction was due to the presence of other bystanders, a diffusion of responsibility and the need for social proof, people when surrounded by strangers will look around at others for cues on how to react, to define whether or not the situation is an emergency, this potential for group inactivation was called the Bystander Effect (Caldini, 1998, p. 198). It was defined in terms of immediate situational factors (Cheery, 1995, p. 18) and to investigate their theory they constructed a series of experiments where a staged emergency situation was created with the independent variable being a lone individual bystander compared to a group of bystanders and the dependant variable being the number of times the emergency produced help. . Latane & Darley's (1968) first staged emergency was a victim having an epileptic attack, which produced help 85 percent of the time for a lone individual and 31 percent of the time for a group of five bystanders (Caldini 1998 : 199). A later experiment (Latane & Darley 1968a) examined social proof in causing inaction, it involved having smoke coming from under a door (Caldini, 1998, p. 199) and used the independent variables of a lone individual, a group of three individuals and a group of three individuals containing two non reacting plants. The potential artificiality of the Latane & Darley 1968 experiments may have produced demand characteristics on the deceived participants but it can be argued that this is a test of their response to group cues or the absence of normal cues as an aspect of pluralistic ignorance (Caldini, 1998, p. 199). What it does not measure is the response to a situation of violence, personal narratives suggest that intervening in violent incidents have risks such as harm to self and others, escalating the situation, absence of a means to diffuse the situation in a timely manner (Bystanders TV1 18/3/98) and culturally defined ambiguity on when it is appropriate to intervene (Murakami, 2001, p. 187).

The context of the emergency situation is significant, whether it features violence or not, the context of violence and whether intervention involves the risk of harm. Although an early account recorded by Rosenthal in 1964 indicates that an onlooker was reluctance to intervene in a lovers quarrel (Cherry, 1995, p 20), Latane & Darley's 1964 experiments did not account for the influence of gender (Cheery, 1995, p. 20). In consequence, Cherry (1995, p. 21) indicates that the Kitty Genovese incident was not looked at from the perspective of violence against women, she says that the gender aspect was excluded quite early on in the process of theorising (Cherry, 1995, p. 21) and this was due to the culturally embedded nature of theorizing (Cherry, 1995, p. 18). Latane & Darley 1964 were looking for immediate situational variables and approached the Kitty Genovese incident using the concepts of group-inhibition and diffusion of responsibility (Cherry, 1995, p. 18) concepts amenable to the positivist assumptions of the Behaviourist approach.

The Shotland & Straw (1976) field experiment recreated the context of the Kitty Genovese incident as violence against a woman (Cherry,1995, p. 275) operating within Behaviourist experimental conditions. The experiment situation had students arriving at a psychology department to fill out an attitude questionnaire and inadvertently hearing an argument, that becomes physical with the woman shrieking out a sentence that establishes whether the male attacker and female victim are strangers or spouses (Tuffin, 2005, p. 19).

The principles of the Shotland & Straw (1976) experiment are Behaviourist because it is producing results that are reproducible, with a limited number of independent variables with a measurable effect on the dependent variable, the participant behaviour (Tuffin, 2005, p. 19). The experiement involves deception, an artificial situation and the reliance on a specific use of language for key manipulations (Tuffin, 2005, p. 19). The independent variable for the Shotland & Straw (1976) experiment was the relationship between the attacker and victim, it involved a face value understanding of language (Tuffin, 2005, p. 71). This was established by having the woman shrieking I don't know you or I don't know why I ever married you (Tuffin, 2005, p. 19). When this independent variable is analysed using a critical approach it is apparent that the independant variable also implies a social reality to the participant that has a different set of risks and social schemas influencing what the appropriate response is by the participant to this situation (Tuffin, 2005, p. 71).

An experiment, divorced from the social context, though producing reproducible and testable data along a specific set of variables can miss the social context by the process of exclusion. The social context of situations requiring bystander intervention include factors such as gender, history, degree of poverty, race and class (Cherry, 1995, p. 27). Cherry (1995, p. 27) now comments that the absence of bystander intervention in situations of violence seems less to do with individual situational variables and more to do with conditions of poverty and systemic exclusion from power which makes communities more vulnerable to violence. She presents her argument for this by quoting a later (1987) article written by Rosenthal, one of the reporters responsible for covering the Kitty Genovese incident in 1964 called The 39th witness (Cherry, 1995, p.28). Her critical approach is non interventionist and acquires its data from real world situations. In it Rosenthal describes the pervasive issue of whether to intervene in an emergency situation or not, almost every day of my life I see a body sprawled on the sidewalk (Cherry, 1995, p. 28). From this she argues that bystander intervention is best understood in a historical and cultural context (Cheery, 1995, p. 29). 3

These are global factors that are part of the social schema and heuristics bystanders will use in their cognitive decision processes regarding whether to intervene or not and includes an affective component. The accounts of victims and bystanders provide descriptions of their impressions, decision processes and affective components, as illustrated the documentary (Bystanders TV1 18/3/98) and Kenichi Yamazaki's narrative of being a bystander and victim of a Sarin gas attack on a Tokyo Metropolitan subway (Murakami 2001). Their accounts suggest the importance of ambiguity, social context and risk analysis in bystander interaction and the social schemas people will use to interpret the situation. The accounts bystanders and victims provide is amenable to qualitative analysis through critical approaches in psychology (Tuffin, 2005, p. 80) which can move beyond the face value of language and have a utility in theorising about power relations.

One of the implications of Cherry's account of historical studies and theorisations of bystander intervention are that current approaches to this issue are potentially to some degree culturally embedded. The increased awareness of the importance of bystander, victim and in Winston Mosely's case, attacker (Cherry, 1995, p. 26) accounts to critical approaches will hopefully facilitate increased congruence of the way bystander intervention is theorised and studied to its context.

Bibliography

Cialdini, R.B. (1998). Cause of death: Uncertainty. In M.H. Davis (Ed), Annual Editions-Social Psychology 98/99 (pp 197- 201). Guilford Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill. Pages 197 to 201.

Cheery F. (1995). Kitty Genovese and culturally embedded theorising. In The Stubborn Particulars of Social Psychology (pp 16-29). London Routledge. Pages 16 to 29.

Manning R. Levine & M Collins A. (2007) The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping. In the American Psychologist, Volume 62, (6). Pages 555 to 562.

Murakami, H. (2001). Tokyo metropolitan subway: Kodemmacho station. In Underground (pp. 183 to 189). NY Vintage International.

Television Documentary on Bystanders, (TV1, 18/3/98).

Tuffin, Keith. (2005). Understanding Critical Social Psychology. Published by Sage, London. Pages 13, 18, 19, 36, 71, 80 & 134.